Fox Host Bolling Is Just Fine With Millions Going Without Health Insurance Because ‘You Have Emergency Rooms’

On Fox’s The Five yesterday, the cohosts discussed the possibility that Congress might repeal Obamacare before coming up with a plan that replaces it, thus leaving millions in the lurch and without health insurance. That’s probably a disturbing scenario to most people. But potential Trump employee and current cohost Eric Bolling doesn’t see a problem because, “You have emergency rooms.”

During the discussion cohost Juan Williams asked, “What about these 20 million people” who are now covered through the Affordable Care Act? He noted that “Even President-elect Trump once said you can’t just put these people out on the street.”

Suddenly losing health insurance with no ability to replace it? Why, that is no biggie to Bolling, who will almost certainly not go without it himself.

BOLLING: They’re not on the street. You still have Medicare and Medicaid. So that’s always going to be there. And you have emergency rooms which we had before. Until another plan is floated, that’s acceptable.

It’s hard to believe Bolling doesn’t know that Medicare and Medicaid are on the chopping block. In addition to cohosting The Five, he also hosts a business show on Fox. He is also being considered for a position in the Trump Commerce Department.

But why should Bolling worry his head about people not being able to afford medical care when he’s got his?

The rest of us can just eat cake and die quickly.

Watch Bolling’s shocking lack of regard for his fellow Americans below, from the November 30, 2016 The Five, via Media Matters.

Showing 14 reactions

John, I truly hope you’re right. I just don’t see that situation happening, given what we are already seeing in the works.

Trump isn’t going to be calling the shots on a lot of this in any case. He can be counted on to provide is a lot of sideshow theatrics and chest-pounding and flat-out bullying, but he’s not going to spend a lot of time noodling on about policy. That work will be done by Mike Pence and the Far Right people surrounding him. Trump may demand certain things happen, but the real work will be done by the Pence team.

The other part of this is that the crowds who Trump wants to satisfy have been whipped up into a complete hatred of Barack Obama and the Democrats. They’ve been whipped into a frenzy of wanting to see the ACA trashed and Hillary Clinton thrown headfirst into the slammer. This group wants to see a massive cement wall built on the Mexican border and they want to see Mexico’s President forced to bow down to Trump and pay for it himself. I’m not sure how Trump can really accomplish the final idea, but Pence’s team can easily accomplish the first two goals apace. They’ll gut the ACA right away and do a few victory laps over that one. Jeff Sessions will then go through the steps of pursuing criminal cases against the Clintons. I’m sure we’ll hear a lot about deportations as well over the next year or two. And we’ll hear about the young Borks that Pence’s team will put on the Supreme Court.

I don’t think the Trump base understands that many of these various actions will actually hurt them in the long term – they just want the visceral satisfaction of knowing they killed the ACA or that they were able to see the Clintons frog-marched the way these guys know everyone wanted to see Karl Rove and Dick Cheney paraded.

Kevin et al – I think you have Trump wrong on matters like healthcare. Certainly, the man is a crazy mix of populist demagoguery, out-of-control narcissism and sheer ignorance, but he is NOT a right wing law-of-the-jungle scold like Ryan.

Constant adulation is the drug Trump craves and demands. He will be in boots ’n all with immigrant-bashing, welfare-squeezing, minority, gay and Islam-bashing and anything anti-intellectual, but he is not going to go along with anything that directly affects his low-info base. That means war, of course, and he will go into battle to protect every existing benefit his people enjoy, whether it is time-and-a-half overtime payments or the provisions of ObamaCare (under a different name, obviously).

Stand by for an all-out civil war between the Trumpistas and the right-wing ‘purists’ on economic issues. Perhaps the silver lining in this whole bizarro situation will be the permanent splitting up of the R Party.

Right Wingers are now trying to push a bogus statistic to get around the brickbats they’ll be facing on January 21st. They’re trying the approach that somehow half of the 22 million newly covered people on the ACA really could have qualified for full, publicly supported coverage before the ACA was passed and were simply too ignorant to sign up for it. The point of this little bit of viciousness is that they are trying to pre-emptively downplay exactly how many people will really lose their coverage after the ACA is dismantled in January. One host actually used the language, “So for that small number of people who really do lose some coverage, that’s tragic and there should probably be some way to address that.”

We’re already seeing that the GOP is floating the notion of “Repeal and Delay”. We shouldn’t fall for it. That “Delay” is only on paper. The reality is that after the ACA is dismantled and defunded, a few tendrils of it will continue to exist in theory for the next couple of years. But there will be no federal funding of the program and insurers are not required to stay in the system if they are expected to foot the whole bill by themselves. This means those plans will be terminated by the insurers and those people simply will no longer have coverage. I’m sure the insurance companies will offer some options for those people to get new plans, all of which will be exponentially more expensive. You have an existing condition? Okay, we’ll cover you. But it will cost you an additional 800 dollars per month, okay? You want to keep your kids on your plan for another couple of years? Okay, we’ll cover them. But it will cost you an additional 300 dollars per kid per month, okay?

I note in particular that the Right is already pre-blaming Dems in the event that they cannot get their “Replace” plan together anytime soon. Because as we all know, it will be the Dems’ fault for not bowing down and caving on everything. I think of it in terms of the GOP ripping the ceiling and roof off of a house during a massive thunderstorm, and then blaming the Dems for objecting when their replacement roof only covers the poshest and nicest parts of the house.

Yeah, just great. Family friend went without healthcare for years before ACA. Right after he got health care thru ACA, he went to a doctor, they wanted to do a chest x-ray. Long story short, he died of stage 4 lung cancer.

Have to wonder if he had regular health care, would it have been caught in time?

You know EZ now that you mention it, we haven’t heard much from BOR yet on the War on Christmas. I guess Bill got tired of the imaginary one and has moved on to a real one. Enjoy Christmas grandpa and grandma. It might be your last one thanks to Bill’s milkshake buddy.

Eyes, I hear you, but you’re assuming that these people care about situations like the diabetic patient. They don’t. As far as the Right is concerned, that patient should have saved money for their medical expenses. If that patient didn’t, tough luck for them. And don’t expect a public service like Medicare or Medicaid to save you, because these guys intend to gut those as well. They don’t want to help contribute to anyone but themselves.

This is the Right Wing philosophy, and this group is going to push the most extreme version of it that they can in your face. If you don’t like it, I’m not sure what to say for the next 4-8 years. Get ready for the sand to get kicked in all our faces as a regular event.

I used to work in public health and I have a close friend in public health so this just infuriates me.

So, say, someone is diabetic. You can’t go to the emergency room every 6 months for a routine monitoring of your lab work and a consult with a physician to manage your condition. You can’t pick up your 90 day supply of pharmaceuticals at an emergency room. No, you’ll have to wait until your diabetes is so bad you lose so much mobility they saw off your leg.

People, I keep telling you Fox News via their trainee Trump have ushered in their wet dream of Social Darwinism. Moral monster Bolling sleeps comfortable in his bed the whole world be damned.

Need medical care? Hop on over to the overcrowded emergency room and pray that someone will get to you before you die.
Need housing? The freeway underpasses always have room for one more homeless person.
Need food? You can get one meal a day at a local soup kitchen.

The securely employed, highly paid talking heads at Fox will keep harping that Emergency Rooms are like a free health clinic for uninsured people. Except for a few things: Emergency rooms aren’t free but are actually a very expensive way to get health care and they WILL track you down (if you use your real name and age) and demand payment. And many kinds of health care just aren’t available at an emergency room. What the Foxies don’t have to deal with that Trump and the elected ones will have to face is that people will eventually notice that they are screwed by Repeal and Replace.

Bolling’s response is exactly what we need to expect from Fox News and the Right for the next four years. Get used to it. Bullying, mean-spiritedness and viciousness. As we’ve noted, 2017 is going to be The Year of the Bully. I don’t know why anyone is surprised to see it happening.

It’s already set that the ACA will be immediately gutted and defended on the 20th in a flourish. The “replace” part will just be empty language for the next 4-8 years at least. These guys never intended to actually replace it because they never wanted health care reform in the first place. As far as they’re concerned, everything in health care was fine until Obama ruined it, but now they’re restoring order. The issue was never whether people have coverage or not. You can always pay a high premium for that, and if you can’t afford it, then thats obviously your problem. Remember the libertarian philosophy: IGMFU.

The important issue here for the Right is that they completely erase the Obama presidency as close to Day 1 as possible. They need the ACA gone, the Iran treaty shredded, the Cuban rapprochement ripped up, the DACA program rescinded, all of it. The point is the same one every schoolyard bully makes. They want you to accept that Obama was a total failure and that you were foolish to think he could accomplish anything. They won. You lost. If you protest or object, the bully will give you a bloody nose or a broken arm. Think back to the Nixonian rule: “When you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” That’s what we have to look forward to for the foreseeable future. Best to be prepared for it.

If Obama Care, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are cut the way Paul Ryan envisions, this country will have plenty of dead and dying people. This is the republican vision?? I guess so. Why not?? Only suckers ever get sick anyway.